Gio Benitez of ABC News on Telling Stories, Learning from Mistakes

Gio Benitez recalled hiding under a table and watching the local TV news in Miami when he was seven years old, during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. “I realized how important local news” is for informing the public, he said.

He knew his future was to work in television, sharing the news and telling stories. “I always had that itch to become a reporter.” 

Benitez, transportation correspondent for ABC News and co-anchor of “Good Morning America” on Saturdays and Sundays, was the opening General Session’s keynote speaker on Oct. 15 at PRSA's ICON 2024 in Anaheim, Calif.

It’s important to take chances in your career, he said. “It’s all about saying ‘yes,’ especially when you’re faced with that fear to say, ‘no.’ When you make that ‘yes’ answer, it’s incredibly powerful.”

Before he became a reporter, Benitez lost his iPhone aboard a cruise — an experience that he says helped kick-start his career. 

At the time, he was a producer at the local CBS affiliate in Miami. To replace the one he’d lost, he waited in line for hours to buy the latest iPhone. The new model was the first to include a video camera. 

He had a story idea: What if he used his new iPhone to record a story on people waiting in line to buy their own new, video-equipped iPhones?

His boss at the station agreed to the assignment. Benitez soon got the chance to be a weekend reporter, filling in on the morning news. But while trying to tease an upcoming story, he botched his words on live TV.

During his keynote speech at ICON 2024, Benitez, who joined ABC in 2013, played a video clip of the incident, which showed him flubbing the words on-air.

“Those mistakes allow you to grow,” he told the PRSA audience. Then, when you face similar problems in the future, “you’ll know how to solve them.”